concert review

I need to preface this concert review by saying I was not on the Wilco bandwagon until last night. Someone who desperately wanted tickets will write in and say they hate me now, but going to this show was more or less a whim. I liked a couple of their songs, yeah, but I bought the tickets primarily to make it up to my husband for the birthday celebration we never had for him due to wrecking my car on the way into Manhattan to see some jazz band, and because the concert venue—a gigantic drained pool in a public park in Brooklyn that will revert to being a splash haven for the city’s kids forevermore after the Sonic Youth concert on August 30—sounded amazing to me.

My default position when going to see a band my husband likes is resistant, because he’s more of a music snob than me, and he gets into technical guitar tricks and purebred lineage, while I prefer raw emotion and clever but twisted lyrics. So I went into the show with the expectation that it might be mildly boring and if so I’d text my Facebook friends with my iPhone all night. My first clue that it might actually turn out to be one of those shows that people end up claiming to have been at for years to come was when we had to wait on line behind nearly six thousand other people just to get into the park.

McCarren Pool was just as I expected: enormous, urban post apocalyptic, haunted with the imprints of generations of people for whom the New York City park system is the closest they’ll ever get to paradise. The crowd was mostly aging hipsters turned yuppies, which includes me— I’m on the cusp of my 40th birthday and this was also a chance for me to relive some of my lost youth while keeping my street cred by seeing a band that is currently popular, not an 80’s revival act.

In the car on the way over from Jersey my husband had played me Wilco’s live double album and explained to me that they’d made a progression from country-flavored rock to incorporating more electronic elements. We’d also agreed that Jeff Tweedy’s voice was borderline annoying but the music made Wilco worthwhile. The vocals were much more appealing in person, and the succession from country to electronic noodling to straight blues-based rock was evident over the course of the set.

The other progression that was evident was from cool to warm to smoking hot. There is an old saying that if you drop a frog in a pan of boiling water, it will jump out and save itself, but if you start it out in lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, it won’t notice the increments of temperature change and it will boil alive. That’s what Wilco did to the audience last night, starting with the seventh song of the set, “Side With The Seeds,” which featured blazing guitar from Nels Cline.

“Misunderstood” was next and it was sad, sweet and grassy. The lyrics “You still love rock and roll; you still have a picture of me” are going to be my epitaph, and the Spanish-style guitar solo at the end of the song was beautiful, painful and cathartic, like letting loose for a really good cry.

Wilco went through more than 8 songs back to back without addressing the audience, but when Tweedy remembered to interact, he had stage presence that was quiet, but wry. The blogger for brooklynvegan.com commented upon his remark, “We’re missing something tonight” as being negative; I took it as irony in its purest form, because by this time he had the audience clapping in time to the drum beat for Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” as provided by brilliant drummer Glen Koche; this is as close as it gets to community for misanthropes.

“Pot Kettle Black” blossomed when played outside because the claustrophobic sound of it opened up, and “Poor Places” made you want to kiss a stranger.

“Spiders (Kidsmoke)” was the first all-out rocking song of the night, and in my opinion, due to the guitar solo that was reminiscent of Karl Precoda playing “Halloween” for the Dream Syndicate, it had to be the definitive live performance of this song.

“Hate It Here” was a bluesy 60’s sounding wall of noise highlight, with Nels Cline really letting go on the guitar. Jeff Tweedy soloed Jimi Hendrix style on “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” and the first encore, “Heavy Metal Drummer,” featured lyrics that were the perfect coda for the night: “I miss the innocence, beautiful and stoned.”

“Late Greats” is the closest thing Wilco has to a crowd-pleaser, but it sounded fresh and heartfelt, and was outshone only by the penultimate song, “Outtasite,” which was blistering, and the punk-influenced final song, “I’m A Wheel,” which featured windmilling by Pat Sansone. Pete Townshend may be old now, and so am I, but real rock magic was alive and well in Brooklyn last night.

No Comments »